Originally posted on 2018-12-07
Not that I am ever moving back.
10) Public Transit
There is no option to travel around our house other than a car we own. Since we are resisting as long as possible the expense of a second car (we will give in eventually) there have been moments where I have missed the option of public transit. We used the Public Transit options in the city, and although we have fewer places to be right now, it was nice knowing that if one of us was out with the car, the other could still get around if needed.
9) Playgrounds
Although there is a playground in the small town we are near, there is only the one. It was nice to have a choice of playgrounds to take the little one to and to have one nearby. The only playground we have the option to go to is the same one she gets to play at every single day at school.
8) Restaurant Choices
At least at this time of year. Since our town is a tourist town, all the restaurants except for one are currently closed. Even during the summer months, there are no Vietnamese, Chinese, or Mexican. The restaurants are wonderful, just we lack the choice we were accustomed to from living in the city. The plus side to this, however, is we are now spending a lot less money on eating out.
7) Coffee Shops
This suffers the same problem as restaurants, the one we have closes for the winter. Now this town is very good at providing ways to have coffee and interact with the others that are here year round, but a timed you can show up and get coffee isn’t the same as meeting a friend at the coffee shop, or being able to simply grab a cup of coffee while you’re out, even if you make better coffee at home.
6) Pizza Delivery
Or any other food for that matter. I realize that this is the third entry about food, but I didn’t even know how much these things were a part of my life. Even if the one pizza place in town was open (it’s not) they don’t deliver at all, and even if they did, we are far enough from that town they probably wouldn’t deliver to us. Yes, we can still make pizza at home, and although usually better, it’s still different. And pizza delivery is just so convenient after a long day of renovating.
5) Neighbors
Honestly, I never thought this would be on the list. When I lived in the city I rarely thought about my neighbors, but it is nice to occasionally see a familiar face waving in greeting, or ending up the odd conversation. Right now, we have almost no neighbors, and the ones we do have, also have long driveways surrounded by trees. When we run into them we are both in cars, or we are in a car and they are walking their dog. We get the wave, but no conversation, and even that is pretty rare. Some days it can feel like we are the only people on the planet.
4) Quick trips….ANYWHERE
I’m sure I have mentioned that we are a 10 or 15 minute drive to the highway (depending which way we go), so going anywhere takes some planning. It used to be if we ran out of something, or needed something we just pop out and get it. Now we keep much better track of the things we use regularly, and when we do find we could use something there is the whole “Do we REALLY need it?” debate. When we do need to go get stuff, we try to plan it for when we’re out anyway, or picking up as many different things as we can per trip.
3) Municipal Water
If you have been following the progress on the property, it shouldn’t be surprising that I would miss this. First having to test the water, then having to put in a bunch of filters to make it drinkable, followed by digging a trench to make sure it didn’t freeze. We were prepared for this when we bought a cottage out in the boonies, but it was nice when it was all dealt with for us.
2) Sewers
We haven’t yet had to deal with the septic tank, but the very fact that we know we are going to have to deal with it weighs on us. If this property was in the city, we could add a bathroom and all it would cost is the bathroom. Here, we need to increase the septic tank and deal with the septic bed in order to add a single bathroom to this 4 bedroom house. Not to mention, if something does go wrong with it, it’s entirely on us to fix it. Don’t take what your city does for you for granted.
1) High Speed Internet
We technically have high speed internet, as in it’s not dial-up, but it is so slow compared to what we had in the city. In the city, we were getting speeds around 150 Mbps. Here, we get about 2.5 Mbps. Family of three each trying to do a different thing on the internet doesn’t really work. Often if one us is watching a video, I switch to my cell service to play games on my phone, otherwise, sometimes, neither works. This is by far the biggest thing we miss.
Please visit our Photos page to see some of the progress we have made this week that will be included in next week’s post. We have made some progress on the shop (western garage), the front hallway, and cleaning up the trees that were cut down last week. Also, you may have noticed the website now contains some advertisements. If you would be purchasing from Amazon or the other companies anyway, please use the links on the website to get there. This helps us out and will allow me the time to keep writing these posts weekly. Thank you very much for reading!
Huron The Lake 